Earlier I wrote about how our last days in Lima were populated by bookends.

Our last night in Peru was also (unfortunately) quite similar to our first night, seven hundred days ago, in Lima. For a quick recap of that less-than-lovely night, you can jump here.

For our last dinner in the City of Kings, we dined out. As we walked out of our house, we could hear the less-than-dulcet tones of a DJ party emanating from the house across the street. This was around 6:00pm.

The noise continued when we returned from ice cream.

The noise continued while we packed.

The noise continued and continued and continued.

The noise continued until 3:00am.

Well, at least the aji de gallina I had for dinner was a good last taste of Lima.

This picture was taken during a city culinary tour that I attended with my lovely wife. In no way have I been compensated by this outfit, but if you ever find yourself in Lima and want an excellent view of the city, please (please) contact these folks over at Capital Culinara.

At this particular restaurant stop in the afternoon – in addition to creating our own ceviche – we also sampled two different types of pisco, an alcohol derived from grapes that is native to Peru and Chile.

The glass on the right is slightly colored as it is a berry-infused version of pisco. The middle glass is straight pisco and is quite delicious. The taste is similar in strength to vodka and only after two belts, my vision began to distort just as much as if I was looking through a glass filled with pisco.

Then we made ceviche and I bit into the rocoto again. That’s what pisco does to your memory.

I have written about the music scene here in Lima (see here and here for samples) and how acts ranging from the 1980s to today fill the seats with their performances.

Another aspect to the music scene (and one I have not written about before) in Peru’s capital city is the thriving world of cover bands. Also known as tribute bands, one can buy tickets for these performances honoring the musical styles of Bob Marley to Madonna to U2 to Radiohead.

Tonight, on this Saturday evening, is an act that appears to combine the two. In honor of the 71st birthday of singer / songwriter (and left-handed person) Paul McCartney, there is a musical act coming to the City of Kings to embrace the music of the Beatles. In one sense, this performance is a tribute band honoring the Fab Four.

Nothing new there as there have been tribute bands to the lads from Liverpool before.

What was different was who was leading this night’s performance.

His name is Pete Best and he was the drummer for the Beatles before Ringo Starr.

To me, Best’s band appears to be the intersection of a tribute band and a musical act.

This place never ceases to me amaze me.

? = r

Over the course of this blog, I have had a quartet of goals during my stay in Peru. The first three (originally written about here) were…

a) Come home in one piece
b) Have fun
c) Avoid sparking an international incident

As for “a”, knock on wood, I am a few days away from achieving that accomplishment.
As for “b”, I have satisfied that goal in buckets as I have travelled to Machu Picchu, an amusement park, a park, and rode a sandboard…just to name a few.
As for “c”, a thorough query of any Internet search engine produces no hits on my name and the phrase “international incident”, so I call that a success.

My fourth goal deals with Bert. That’s the name I gave to the cactus I wrote about during my fifth day in Lima. Back then, I wrote that my task was to ensure that Bert stays alive during my stay.

In our final days here in Peru, the majority of our belongings are in cardboard boxes and wending its way to our next location. One of those items is our main computer. In addition to being our gateway to the Internet, our desktop PC is also the repository of our digital photographs since 2008. Because our PC is in the hands of movers, I am unable to access the trove of pictures I have accumulated since arriving in Lima.

However, I do have one photograph about life in Lima that I am so proud of that I actually use it as the wallpaper for the laptop that I am currently using. I searched through this website and discovered that – as far as I can tell – I have not offered it up for your enjoyment.

Now I have talked about paragliding before (see here and here and here) and how the Miraflores section of Lima has an area specifically reserved for those daring aerial acrobats to take tourists up in the Peruvian sky.

What I have not shared before is this photo…

Up in the air, junior birdman…

What I like about this snapshot is the fact that only can you see a pair of paragliders and a slight sliver of the Pacific Ocean, but I also managed to capture the black-and-white lighthouse that towers over the coast of Miraflores.

Last April, I wrote about how fast food eateries (e.g., McDonald’s, Burger King) in Peru employ motorcycles to deliver their edibles to people’s homes.

In that post, I made the claim that the burgers and fries that appear at the customer’s front door is as hot as it is if they had been ordered at the restaurant itself. I made this claim with no experience to back it up so I was actually making a guess when I refuted the comment by Kai Ryssdal.

However, I can now state with absolute authority whether the meat patty and salted potatoes do indeed come to the house hot for today we (finally) called our local McDonald’s and ordered Big Macs, McNuggets, a McPollo, a McNifica, and french fries.

My apologies for not posting recently, but the Family has been in the process of wrapping up our stay here in Lima.

Our two years in Peru’s capital is rapidly coming to an end and that means packing, throwing out stuff, filling out forms, tying up loose ends, and preparing for our next grand adventure.

This past week has seen me thinking about bookends. When telling a story, “bookending” means that themes or motifs that appear at the beginning of the tale also show up at the end. Such is what is happening with me as we wind down our South American travels.

On Sunday, Father’s Day, the family and I went out to lunch at Tanta at Jockey Plaza, the mall we visited on our second day in Lima. At that meal to celebrate Dia de la Papa, I had aji de gallina, which is one of the first truly Peruvian culinary creations that I enjoyed.

On the next day, the movers came and took away the majority of our possessions so that they could be placed on a boat (and hopefully a fast-moving vessel) to Thailand. So our domicile is in the same empty spacious condition it was in when we first moved in. We do have a working computer and stable access to the Internet (hence this blog post) so the big difference between then and now is that our kids aren’t flexing their creativity as they did back in 2011 but then again they still have school so their days are full.

On Tuesday, my lovely wife and I had lunch at a new restaurant that opened up in our section of Lima. While we enjoyed our beverages and I was appreciating my lomo soltado, the eatery began to shake. Turns out, Lima was in the middle of an 4.6 earthquake. It had been some time since the Peruvian capital had been hit by a tremor, but back in August of 2011, just after our arrival, the city was shaken by a 7.0 quake.

To round out this bookend of a post, I had my last lunch at Bembos, the Peruvian hamburger chain that I first sampled on our first full day in Peru. My burger did have an egg on it, but, sadly, the condiment dispenser was broken so I had to do without the fabulous aji sauce that I have grown to relish here.